responsible and irresponsible

Posted on January 8, 2013 by greg

Two years ago today Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords was meeting her constituents in a grocery store parking lot in a suburb of Tucson, Arizona. A young man named Jared Loughner arrived at the event with a concealed Glock 19 9mm pistol, which he’d legally purchased a few months earlier.

Loughner used that weapon to shoot Giffords through the head at point blank range. He then began firing randomly at others at the event. When he paused to reload, he was tackled and subdued by bystanders. Loughner had fired 31 rounds (although he had a 30 round magazine, he’d arrived at the event with a round already in the chamber). He had a second fully loaded 30 round magazine in his pocket, along with two 15 round magazines. That’s a total of 91 rounds.

The shooting only lasted about 15 seconds, during which Loughner managed to shoot 18 people, killing six of them. Had he been limited to the standard 15 round magazine sold with the weapon, the carnage would have been reduced.

Today, on the Facebook page of the National Rifle Association, you can find this graphic:

The numbers may be accurate, but not surprisingly, they’re deliberately misleading. The NRA is right — rifles and shotguns are NOT the weapons of choice for murder. Handguns are. The majority of murders are fairly spontaneous events, often fueled by alcohol or drugs. Folks get drunk, get in an argument, a fight starts, a gun is pulled, and there you are. It’s fairly rare for somebody to have a shotgun or rifle on them in most murder scenarios; usually in the time it takes for a person to leave the area and go fetch a rifle or shotgun, either the intended shooter calms down enough to re-think the situation or the intended victim hauls ass and leaves.

So no, there aren’t a lot of murders by rifle or shotgun. However, when it comes to mass shooting, rifles are one of the weapons of choice. The irresponsible NRA fails to mention that in their graphic. There were also some other numbers missing from the NRA’s graphic, so I’ve added them.

Blunt Instrument Murders: 496 (1.36 deaths per day)
Hands/Feet Murders: 726 (1.98 deaths per day)
Knife Murders: 1,694 (4.64 deaths per day)
Firearm Murders: 8,583 (23.51 deaths per day)
All Firearm Deaths: 31,347 (85.88 deaths per day)

Firearms make it easier to kill, it’s that simple. Easier to kill yourself, easier to kill other people — accidentally or intentionally. Large capacity magazines make it easier to kill more people; it’s also that simple. Those are facts the NRA doesn’t want you to know.

I’m not an advocate for disarming the U.S. As I’ve said before, I rather like guns. But it’s possible to like guns and still want to see the annual body count reduced.

Today, on the second anniversary of the shooting she somehow managed to survive, Gabby Giffords and her husband, Mark Kelly, have launched Americans for Responsible Solutions — an organization dedicated to sensible firearm policy. In their opinion piece, Giffords and Kelly write:

We have experienced too much death and hurt to remain idle. Our response to the Newtown massacre must consist of more than regret, sorrow and condolence.

They’re right. Regret doesn’t change anything. Sorrow and condolence don’t change anything. People can change things. And it’s way past time we did.

ice ice baby

Posted on January 7, 2013 by greg

I like people. I really do. But sometimes I despair of their lack of interest in the world around them. A few days ago I was downtown, crossing a bridge over the river, and I was overtaken by a couple of guys walking in the same direction. I heard one of them say “River’s iced over.” The other guy glanced over the side of the bridge and said “Yep.” And that was it.

One of the most intriguing winter phenomena was taking place below them, and they didn’t see it. Rivers and streams freeze every year, yes. It’s nothing new. But it’s a fascinating process. It’s a radically different process than what takes place on a lake or pond because…well, river water moves, and that makes the freezing process significantly more complex.

On a moving body of fresh water, ice almost always begins to form along the banks. There are a couple reasons for that. First, the temperature in the shallow water along the shore drops faster on a cold night. Second, there are quiescent areas along the banks where the water is more still. Ice that forms along the bank is appropriately known as border ice. If the river or stream or brook is narrow enough — or if the weather stays cold enough — border ice will gradually expand toward the center of the stream until the entire surface freezes over.

Border ice

But that’s not so very different from what happens on lakes and ponds — or in your birdbath, for that matter. The really interesting stuff takes place away from the banks, where the water is more turbulent. That’s when the freezing process gets weird and wonderful.

As the temperature drops, the surface of the water begins to lose heat rapidly. The turbulence of the river flow sort of roils that super-cooled surface water with a less cold layer of water just below the surface. This causes tiny crystals of ice to form. Those crystals gather in loose, randomly-oriented discoid or needle-shapes. This is called frazil ice.

Frazil often looks like slush in the water. There are a couple of things that make frazil interesting. First, like most ice, frazil floats — so it travels downstream. Second it has an extreme capacity to adhere to any object it comes in contact with. In other words, frazil clumps easily.

Frazil ice

As it floats downstream, frazil bumps into stuff and sticks. In the photograph above, you can see frazil in its slushy form at the top of the frame. You can also see the line where frazil is clumping to more frazil, which will form the border of an ice pan. That raised line of ice is actually caused by the repeated collision of frazil against frazil.

A later stage of freezing occurs when frazil crystals coagulate to form a sort of soupy layer on the surface of the water. This is called grease ice because it looks slick. It doesn’t reflect light very well, which gives the water surface a matte appearance.

Grease ice

As the ice crystals become more compacted and solid they release more heat, creating surface slabs of ice known as ice pans. This is more like the ice we’re most familiar with. Ice pans often break free and float away downstream, banging and colliding with other ice pans, given them a softly rounded edges.

When these surface slabs of ice form in the bend of a river, they sometimes get caught in the rotational shear of the current and the ice pan spins around and around. As it rotates, the outer edge is gradually ground away until if forms an almost perfect circle. I’ve only seen this phenomenon once; sadly, I don’t have a photograph of it.

The photograph below, however, shows several different facets of the river freezing process. You can see the border ice; you can see where frazil has formed and clumped together causing a slushy barrier; you can see where that barrier has coalesced into grease ice; and you can see where ice pans have broken away and been refrozen in mid-stream.

Ice pans

This astonishing collection of various freezing processes is precisely what those guys were looking at when they said “River’s iced over.”

Now, I understand that other folks might not find these details as intriguing as I do. I understand that for a lot of folks — most folks, probably — the only ice that matters is the ice in their drinks. I understand that, I really do. But I can’t help feeling that those two guys who hurried by me on the bridge have missed out on something. I can’t help thinking that if they stopped for just a moment and really looked at the river, if they’d asked themselves what was happening — even if they never bothered to seek out the answers — that their lives would be somewhat richer.

justice, poetic

Posted on January 4, 2013 by greg

Six hundred and ninety-one days ago, Elizabeth Warren was testifying before the Senate Oversite Committee. She was then acting as an adviser to the Obama administration, helping establish the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Warren was the logical and obvious choice to head that agency, but the Wall Street lobby adamantly opposed her. That, of course, meant Republicans in Congress also opposed her. In fact, something like four dozen Republican Senators wrote a letter to President Obama vowing to oppose any candidate of any political party nominated to head the agency.

Before the hearing, Ms. Warren had notified the committee that she’d only be available for an hour because of a previously scheduled appointment. When she reminded committee members of that conflict during her testimony, Senator Patrick McHenry (Republican Asshole, North Carolina) accused her of lying. “You’re making that up,” he said.

Elizabeth Warren, 24 May, 2011

You can see the shock of the accusation registered on her face. This morning, though, she had a completely different look on her face. Here is freshman Senator Elizabeth Warren being sworn in today as the first woman Senator from Massachusetts.

Senator Elizabeth Warren, 4 January, 2013

Sen. Warren has been assigned to the Senate Banking Committee. That’s right, she’s going to be monitoring the activities of Wall Street. She’ll be seated at the same panel with Richard Shelby (Republican Asshole, Alabama), one of the group of Republican Senators who wrote the letter to the president swearing to oppose her and any other nominee to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

The irony is delicious.

a suggestion for eric cantor

Posted on January 3, 2013 by greg

Today is the third day since 1994 that the United States doesn’t have a Violence Against Women Act in place. That’s right, after nearly two decades of bipartisan support, Congress has allowed VAWA to expire. (Here’s a .pdf of the bill, if you can stand to read it.)

When I say Congress, what I really mean is the House of Representatives. And when I say the House of Representatives, I really mean a small group of batshit crazy conservative Republicans — and specifically House Majority Leader, Republican Eric Cantor. I’m talking about this guy:

Eric Cantor (Republican asshole)

Don’t get me wrong. VAWA isn’t a perfect law. No law is without flaws. And, to be fair, one of Cantor’s complaints about VAWA has some merit. Not much, but some. Cantor and his fellow Republicans complain about a provision of the law that allows immigrant women married to abusive US citizens to gain a temporary (up to four years) residency status while their case is resolved.

Right now you’re probably saying to yourself, Dude, giving abused immigrant women temporary US residency sounds like a good thing. And you’re right, it is — under most circumstances. The physical, emotional, and sexual violence committed against mail-order brides and other immigrant spouses often goes unreported in part because the victims are also threatened with being sent back to their native countries. This provision of the law protects them. However, there have been a small number of immigrant women who have falsely claimed abuse in order to gain a green card. Indeed, this seems to have become a tactic used by some Russian organized crime gangs. There are maybe two or three dozen known or suspected cases of Russian brides making such a claim.

So there are a few legitimate problems with the law. But Eric Cantor and other conservative Republicans aren’t opposed to the law simply because a minor loophole has benefited twenty or thirty Russian immigrants. No, they also oppose it because it offers protections for lesbians and Native American women.

Seriously. I know that sounds completely fucking insane, but I swear I’m not making that up. The guys are actually opposed to extending the law to protect certain groups of women.

Cantor claims his problem with the provisions protecting Native women is that it extends the jurisdiction of tribal justice to include non-Native American men. Right now, if a white guy commits a crime of violence against a Native woman on a reservation — if he beats her, or rapes her, or murders her — tribal police and tribal courts can’t act. The crime has to be reported to Federal authorities, who generally don’t reside on the reservation or have offices on the reservation. So it may take hours for them to respond. Failure to respond quickly means evidence is lost or tainted. Without evidence, prosecutions either fail or, more often, prosecutors simply decline to prosecute.

A report by the General Accounting Office noted that prosecutors declined to bring charges against 52% of the violent crimes reported on reservations. Why? Lack of evidence. What makes this even more serious is the data reported in the Tribal Law and Order Act of 2010:

34 percent of American Indian and Alaska Native women will be raped in their lifetimes

39 percent of American Indian and Alaska Native women will be subject to domestic violence

A third of Native American women will report being raped and/or beaten by domestic partners. Let me repeat that, because it boggles the mind. A third of Native American women will report being raped and/or beaten. Some of those rapists and abusers will be white men. Most of their crimes won’t be reported. Of those that are reported, about half won’t even be prosecuted, primarily because of inadequate evidence collection.

Lisa Marie Iyotte at signing of the Tribal Law and Order Act of 2010

Lisa Marie Iyotte, domestic violence victim/advocate, at signing of the Tribal Law and Order Act of 2010

The new provisions in VAWA gives tribal police and courts some limited authority to investigate and prosecute non-Native Americans accused of domestic violence, sexual assault and other crimes against Native American women on Indian reservations. That’s it. That’s all it does. For some reason, Eric Cantor and his Republican friends think it’s inappropriate for tribal police to investigate white suspects or prosecute white defendants.

As for their opposition to including lesbians in VAWA, the only conclusion I can draw is this: they just don’t care if lesbians get raped or have the shit beat out of them. What other explanation is there?

But I have a suggestion for Eric Cantor. This is my suggestion:

Eric, don’t think of victims of violence in terms of their immigrant status, or their ethnicity, or their sexual preference. Just think of them as victims of violence. Then grow the fuck up and do the right thing. In a few days a new session of Congress will begin. Pass VAWA.

Oh, and really, stop being such a dick.

thanks, but no

Posted on January 1, 2013 by greg

Thank you very much for asking, but no.

No, I will not ‘Get Fit in 2013‘ with you. No thank you, I will not join a ‘Fit Photographers’ discussion group. No, please accept my apologies, but I will not be ‘Cycling for the Heart’ this year. No, I do most sincerely appreciate your interest, but ‘Eating Healthy in the New Year‘ is not on my agenda. I don’t even have an agenda for the new year. I don’t even have an agenda for today.

So, no. Thank you for asking, but no. Now please, shut the fuck up and leave me alone.

I’ll continue to walk a lot, but not because it’s good for me. I’ll walk because I enjoy it. I like the pace of walking. Sometimes I’ll walk quickly, but more often I’ll stroll. Or meander. Or dawdle. Because I like to look at stuff. I may interrupt my walk for five, ten, or thirty minutes to watch some ants trying to carry a dead caterpillar. That’s why I’m walking — because watching ants tote a dead caterpillar across a sidewalk is a lot more interesting to me than my body mass index.

I’ll continue to ride my bicycle a lot, but not because it’s good exercise. I’ll ride my bike because riding a bike is fun. I’ll ride my bike to the market, but not to conserve fuel or save the environment. Those are good things. to be sure, and very commendable. I’m a big fan of conserving fuel and saving environments. But I’m riding because getting on a bike makes me feel like I’m twelve years old. I’m not going to be maintaining a certain pace, I’m not going to be trying to burn calories, I’m not going to be seeking out hills because they offer a challenge. If I ride up a hill, it’ll be because the damned hill is in my way. I’m much more interested in getting to the other side of the hill than in my ‘optimal heart rate while exercising.’

I’ll continue to cook the foods I want and eat them because I enjoy them. I won’t count calories, I won’t pay attention to how much salt or sugar there is, I’ll use real butter, I’ll eat fish because I like fish, I’ll eat pork because I was raised by a Southern woman, I won’t eat a lot of red meat because I don’t like a lot of red meat, I’ll eat glutens because I don’t know what a fucking gluten is and I’m not going to bother to learn, I’ll eat veggie burgers because I like they way they taste, I’ll eat organic foods if they’re available and I can afford them because they usually taste better, I’ll eat whatever I think might taste good even if it’s not healthy and even if it’s actively bad for me. I like food.

My body is not a temple. I have absolutely no interest in living in a temple. You know what my body is? It’s an alley.

It’s a pretty clean alley, but it’s an alley. The buildings are old and beat up, but they’re still standing. There are some weeds and oil stains and odd bits of wiring hanging loose here and there, and it’s been patched up a few times, but that’s what happens, right? Here’s the thing: you can relax in an alley. It’ll never be pretty, but it can be tidied up. You can’t relax in a temple, unless you’re a priest — and even then you have to be on your best behavior. Nobody has to be on their best behavior in an alley.

Okay, that alley metaphor? It’s kind of stupid. Mostly I just wanted to include a photo in this post and when I was looking through my files and saw the alley photo, I thought of the analogy. So I decided to use it. That’s pretty much my approach to staying fit too. If I do something healthy, it’s usually because it doesn’t conflict with something else I’m doing. The fact is, I’m moderately healthy — but being healthy isn’t a goal; it’s a side effect. Maybe if I ever become actually unhealthy that’ll change. But for now, no.

So really, thanks for all the good thoughts for the coming year, and thanks for being concerned about my physical well-being, and thanks for inviting me to become or stay healthy with you. It’s very sweet and thoughtful. But no.

I thank you, and again I thank you. But no.

this shit has to stop

Posted on December 24, 2012 by greg

Set fire to a building, wait for the police and the fire department to show up, fire a few rounds at them, run away.

This used to be a tactic used in inner cities during the infamous Long Hot Summer of 1967. A hundred and sixty urban riots during a four month period. A lot of anger and rage against government — national, state, municipal, it didn’t matter. Tension about the war in Southeast Asia, tension about racism, tension about drug laws, tension exacerbated by the summer heat. Start a fire, wait for the response, fire a few rounds, run away. The motives in 1967 were personal and political. Not like this — not like what happened this morning in Webster, NY.

Scene of the shooting, Webster, NY

This morning, in a middle-class, lakeside suburb near Rochester, firefighters — and let me stress this: volunteer firefighters — arrived at the scene of a home fire and were shot at. Four firefighters were shot; two are dead. The gunman is also dead. The house that was on fire — it burned to the ground since the firefighters couldn’t extinguish the blaze while being shot at. Three other houses were also destroyed when the fire spread; four others were damaged by fire.

I don’t know if the shooter started the fire. I don’t know if this was planned or spontaneous. I don’t know how the shooter was armed or what sort of ammunition he used. But I know this: this shit has to stop.

Last week, it was children and their teachers. This morning, volunteer firefighters. Regular people who give up some of their free time to train and practice putting out fires. Regular men and women who, when called, willingly stop whatever they’re doing and respond to help the people of their communities. They don’t care if the house belongs to a friend or a stranger, they don’t care if the house is owned by Democrats or Republicans, they don’t care if the inhabitants are black or white, they don’t care if it’s the home of illegal immigrants. They get the call and they deliberately put themselves in real danger, because it needs to be done.

And some asshole with a gun shoots them.

My guess is Wayne LaPierre of the National Rifle Association will suggest that all firefighters should be armed so they can return fire.

Let me be clear about this. It’s NOT the individual firearms that’s the problem. The problem is ALL the firearms. It’s the easy availability of firearms and the availability of high capacity magazines. Making firearms more difficult to obtain IS NOT going to stop mass shootings; our culture is much too fucked up at this point for that to stop. But we can, over time, at least try to reduce the body count.

This shit has to stop.

asshole dentist v. hot dental assistant

Posted on December 22, 2012 by greg

James Knight is a dentist in Fort Dodge, Iowa and a good family man. We know he’s a good family man because he fired his dental assistant of ten years because she was “irresistible” and therefore a threat to his marriage.

No, I’m not making this up. Melissa Nelson had been Dr. Knight’s assistant for just over a decade. For most of that time, there was no problem.

Dr. Knight admits that Nelson was a good dental assistant. Nelson in turn acknowledges that Dr. Knight generally treated her with respect, and she believed him to be a person of high integrity.

Ms. Nelson stated she thought of Knight as “a friend and father figure.” But over the last year and a half of her employment, Knight began to behave in a rather unfatherly way. He complained that her “clothing was too tight and revealing and ‘distracting.’” So distracting in fact, that he was forced to talk to her about it.

Dr. Knight acknowledges he once told Nelson that if she saw his pants bulging, she would know her clothing was too revealing.

On one occasion he texted her after work, stating the shirt she’d worn that day was too tight. When she disagreed, he texted her that…

it was a good thing [she] did not wear tight pants too because then he would get it coming and going.

Ms. Nelson denies any of her work attire was inappropriate in any way. So she was surprised a couple years ago when she was called into Dr. Knight’s office at the end of the workday and was told she was being fired. Knight had the pastor of his church in the office with him, and he read a prepared statement to Ms. Nelson.

The statement said, in part, that their relationship had become a detriment to Dr. Knight’s family and that for the best interests of both Dr. Knight and his family and Nelson and her family, the two of them should not work together.

Then Knight gave her an envelope with a month’s wages and showed her the door. That night her husband (both Knight and Nelson are married and have children; Knight’s wife also works at her husband’s dental office) called Knight, and they arranged to meet. Again, Knight brought the pastor of his church to the meeting.

In the meeting, Dr. Knight told Steve Nelson that Melissa Nelson had not done anything wrong or inappropriate and that she was the best dental assistant he ever had. However, Dr. Knight said he was worried he was getting too personally attached to her. Dr. Knight told Steve Nelson that nothing was going on but that he feared he would try to have an affair with her down the road if he did not fire her.

Seriously. This asshole fired her because he was afraid he’d try to have an affair with her. So she did the reasonable thing. She sued his ass.

Let me interrupt myself and say something about the Iowa Supreme Court. It has a long and venerable history of standing up for civil rights. The very first decision the court issued was In Re the Matter of Ralph (a colored man), in which the court found that a Missouri slave residing in the ‘free territory’ of Iowa could not be returned to his owner — that simply by living in Iowa Ralph was a free man. This was 18 years before the US Supreme Court heard a similar case (Dred Scott) but ruled in favor of the slave owner. This was 22 years before the beginning of the American Civil War.

In 1868, their decision in the case of Clark v. The Board of Directors ruled that racially segregated ‘separate but equal’ schools for children had no place in Iowa’s educational system. It took the US Supreme Court another 85 years to reach the same conclusion in Brown v. Board of Education.

In 1869, when Arabella Mansfield sued the Iowa Bar Association for denying her the right to practice law, the decision by the Iowa Supreme Court made Iowa the first state in the union to admit women to the practice of law.

In 2009 the Iowa Supreme Court unanimously ruled against legislation banning same-sex marriage, making Iowa the fifth state in the union to permit same-sex couples to marry.

The Iowa Supreme Court, when given a chance to stand up for the oppressed, for the marginalized, for the disadvantaged and downtrodden and mistreated, has always made the difficult but right decision. Until now.

Ms. Nelson’s suit argued that she’d been unlawfully terminated because of her gender. She made three main points against Dr. Knight and her termination. She argued that:

any termination because of a boss’s physical interest in a subordinate amounts to sex discrimination: “Plaintiff’s sex is implicated by the very nature of the reason for termination.” Second, she suggests that without some kind of employee misconduct requirement, Dr. Knight’s position becomes simply a way of enforcing stereotypes and
permitting pretexts: The employer can justify a series of adverse employment actions against persons of one gender by claiming, “My spouse thought I was attracted to them.” Third, she argues that if Dr. Knight would have been liable to Nelson for sexually harassing her, he should not be able to avoid liability for terminating her out of fear that he was going to harass her.

In effect, Melissa Nelson’s position was that she didn’t do anything to get herself fired except to exist as a woman.

And the Iowa Supreme Court? It dismissed her suit. It ruled in favor of Dr. Knight. Despite the fact that everybody involved agrees Ms. Nelson did nothing wrong, it ruled in favor of Knight. Despite the fact that the Court itself referred to “Dr. Knight’s unfair decision to terminate Nelson (while paying her a rather ungenerous one month’s severance)” they ruled in his favor.

Iowa Supreme Court

Why? Because her termination from employment wasn’t “based on gender itself” but was a decision “driven entirely by individual feelings and emotions regarding a specific person.” Their ruling was apparently grounded in the notion that there were several other women working in Dr. Knight’s office, and he didn’t fire them. He only fired the woman he was afraid he’d try to sleep with. She wasn’t fired because of her gender, according to the court, but was apparently fired because she was smoking hot. And that, I guess, is okay.

It should be noted, though, that of the seven judges who voted to overturn Iowa’s ban on gay marriage, only one remains on the bench. The others were replaced after Republicans raised massive amounts of money to defeat them. This is now an all-male court in which the majority of the judges were appointed by a Republican governor. So maybe I shouldn’t be so surprised.

more guns

Posted on December 21, 2012 by greg

In his news appearance today Wayne LaPierre, the Executive Vice President of the National Rifle Association, made this dubious claim:

[N]obody has addressed the most important, pressing and immediate question we face: How do we protect our children right now, starting today, in a way that we know works?

That might sound like a profoundly stupid claim, considering that a lot of people have, in fact, been addressing that very issue. But since the NRA believes there’s only one possible answer to the question, they assume the question really hasn’t been addressed. The NRA’s answer, of course, is we need more guns.

More guns. For three and a half decades, that’s been the NRA’s answer. Since 1977, when new leadership took over the NRA, the group has been pressing the ‘more guns’ solution. They’ve stopped representing hunters and ordinary folks; now they represent firearms manufacturers. What do firearms manufactures want to sell? More guns.

Wayne LaPierre, NRA Chief Executive

In his speech today, LaPierre pointed out that

[F]ederal gun prosecutions have decreased by 40 percent, to the lowest levels in a decade.

What he neglected to mention is the NRA’s role in that situation. LaPierre failed to note his group has helped Republicans draft legislation making it more difficult for law enforcement agencies to investigate and prosecute firearms cases.

Because of Republicans in Congress (all of whom are supported by the NRA), the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (the only federal agency allowed to investigate federal firearms crime) has fewer field agents now than it did 40 years ago. There are fewer than 2500 agents to oversee the activities of more than 60,000 licensed gun licensed gun dealers (and nobody knows how many unlicensed gun dealers). The BATF hasn’t had a Director for more than six years, because Republicans in the Senate refuse to confirm any nominee not supported by the NRA.

The NRA drafted legislation offered and passed by Republicans that prohibit the BATF by law from performing more than a single unannounced inspection of a licensed firearms dealer in any 12-month period. The BATF is also prohibited from requiring gun dealers to conduct inventory checks to detect loss and theft. What do those limitations mean for criminals? More guns.

The NRA also drafted and lobbied for a Republican-sponsored law requiring the Justice Department and the FBI to destroy within 24 hours the records of all gun buyers whose background checks were approved. That makes it harder to catch gun dealers who falsify their records. It also makes it more difficult for law enforcement to identify and track straw purchasers (people who buy guns for folks who wouldn’t be able to pass a background check). What does that put in the hands of more criminals? More guns.

If that’s not enough, the BATF is also prevented by law from providing gun trace data to municipal and state law enforcement agencies. This data can show where illegal guns are coming from, who buys them, and how they travel across state lines. Criminological studies consistently reveal that most of the firearms seized at crime scenes are sold by a very small percentage of licensed gun dealers. The denial of that sort of information means it’s almost impossible to prosecute gun dealers who supply criminals with more guns.

In fact, Riverview Gun Sales, the gun shop that sold the weapons used in the Newtown, CT school shooting, also sold the weapons used to kill eight people in Hartford, CT in 2010. In 2007, an employee of that same gun shop was accused of stealing 33 firearms from the shop’s inventory. Only two of those guns were recovered. The man pleaded ‘no contest’ to stealing those two guns; he received an 18 month suspended sentence.

Riverview Gun Sales

So LaPierre is right. Gun prosecutions are down — and we have the NRA to thank for that. And criminals can also thank the NRA for giving them greater access to more guns.

The NRA’s solution to the tragedy in Newtown, CT isn’t to make it more difficult for crazy people to arm themselves. Their answer is more guns. Their answer is to turn schools into armed camps. LaPierre said this today:

[W]e need to have every single school in America immediately deploy a protection program proven to work and by that I mean armed security.

Rather than try to prevent the shootings, the NRA’s answer to school shooting is to make somebody available to return fire. More guns.

LaPierre did say one thing today that I agree with completely. He said,

If we truly cherish our kids, more than our money, more than our celebrities, more than our sports stadiums, we must give them the greatest level of protection possible.

He’s right, we must give school children the greatest level of protection possible. But that doesn’t mean arming teachers or placing armed, uniformed guards in every schoolhouse in the US. It doesn’t mean providing still more guns. The greatest level of protection would be to make it more difficult for deranged people to obtain a firearm. It would be to reduce the number of rounds that deranged people can fire. Giving the greatest level of protection would include giving BATF and other law enforcement agencies the tools they need to actively investigate and prosecute firearms violations.

You know what else ‘giving school children the greatest level of protection possible’ would mean? It would mean telling the National Rifle Association to go fuck itself.

gregfallis.com

it's this or get a real job